Job Gains Drive Romney to Attack Obama Over Gas

WSJ's Neil King previews Tuesday's Illinois primary and how the upcoming dates on the GOP primary calendar might benefit the candidates. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

By

Sara Murray and

Carol E. Lee

Updated March 20, 2012 9:55 a.m. ET

CHICAGO—An improving job market is prompting Mitt Romney to scrap his emphasis on the unemployment rate and to focus on rising gas prices and government regulation as evidence that President Barack Obama has mismanaged the economy.

"With the economy looking like it's getting a little better on the employment front, gasoline's getting a lot worse," Mr. Romney told a crowd at a town-hall meeting Sunday in Vernon Hills, Ill.

At the University of Chicago on Monday, Mr. Romney argued that government regulation under Mr. Obama threatens to strangle ground-breaking ideas and would have stopped the work of Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers.

Mr. Romney has built his campaign on the premise he is better-equipped than Mr. Obama or any of the other Republicans seeking the presidential nomination to reinvigorate the economy.

The new approach in Mr. Romney's attacks came on the cusp of a primary election on Tuesday in Illinois that has the potential to boost his lead over other GOP candidates in the delegate count. The few polls conducted recently show Mr. Romney leading his closest rival, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, by between four and 15 percentage points. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul have campaigned little in the state and trail in opinion surveys.

Mr. Santorum on Monday glossed over economic concerns on the last leg of his own campaign swing through the state, focusing instead on Mr. Romney's track record as a governor, U.S. policy toward Iran and the president's new health-care law.

"Don't make it about who best can manage Washington, be the CEO of the economy," Mr. Santorum urged supporters at an event in Dixon, Ill., a reference to Mr. Romney's business background. With a statue of Ronald Reagan serving as a backdrop, Mr. Santorum said that Mr. Romney had "simply abandoned freedom when he was governor of Massachusetts" by pushing a health-care law that included a mandate that most people buy health insurance.

Mr. Romney has spent much of the past year citing the unemployment rate as evidence that Mr. Obama's policies are an impediment to a robust economic recovery. But the rate has shown steady, if still slow, improvement, notching down to 8.3% last month from 9% a year earlier.

During a campaign stop in Springfield, Ill., early Monday morning, Mr. Romney told a diner crowd that he believes "the economy is coming back." He added: "The economy always comes back after a recession, of course. There's never been one we didn't recover from."

Mr. Obama's political team is concerned that rising gas prices will diminish some of the political advantage the president may gain from the improving economy. Mr. Obama will take a two-day trip later this week to showcase his energy policies.

At oil and gas production fields in New Mexico, he will try to rebut the Republican contention that his administration has stifled domestic output. In Cushing, Okla., Mr. Obama will spotlight his approval of an oil pipeline there, in a bid to counter GOP criticism of his administration's rejection of Keystone XL, the proposed Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline.

Mr. Romney's efforts to blame the president for the price at the pump marks a shift in tone for the GOP front-runner, who just a few weeks ago attributed the uptick to global demand for oil.

"The American people know that, to a certain degree, gas prices are driven by what's happening around the world," Mr. Romney told voters in Michigan in late February.

"People recognize that the president can't precisely set the price at the pump," he told CNBC earlier this month.

Mr. Romney turned to government regulation and taxes in the speech at the University of Chicago. He chose the longtime academic home of conservative economist Milton Friedman to cast the presidential race as a struggle between free-market ideas and invasive regulators backed by the president. "Our economic freedom will be on the ballot," Mr. Romney said.

Mr. Romney said regulators "would have shut the Wright Brothers down for their 'dust pollution' " and banned Thomas Edison's light bulb. "Oh yeah, regulators actually did just that," the candidate said, referring to light-bulb legislation passed by Congress (and signed by former President George W. Bush).

On the campaign trail, Messrs. Romney and Santorum both promise voters they would approve completion of the Keystone pipeline extension, which would link an oil-rich region of Canada with refiners in Oklahoma, Texas and along the Gulf Coast.

The Obama campaign disputed Mr. Romney's remarks during a conference call with reporters Monday. Obama campaign surrogate Cecilia Rouse, a former member of the Council of Economic Advisers and professor at Princeton University, said Mr. Romney's view of Mr. Obama's regulatory policy "sounds very nice, however there is not actually any evidence that regulatory burden has a meaningful impact on employment or the economy now."

In a bid to link often-arcane policy decisions to the lives of everyday Americans, both candidates often trot out personal examples of rising costs affecting families and small businesses.

"A lot of moms wonder, can they take their kids from event to event, and to school and to soccer practice," Mr. Romney said Monday. "People are hurting in this country."

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.